Hearing that, Danna spun around to give me a worried look. She and I were well aware of what exactly that failure meant. We’d die, essentially, turning into mere fodder for the chiasma, and my current placement in the class did little in appeasing my worries. I didn’t just want to be in the top ten percent, however. I needed to make sure that all of us survived, even though I wasn’t quite sure where to start. If I failed in my quest to save these girls, I fully intended to head back to Agness and use my spell on her, even if Devon told me it wouldn’t work.
I questioned whether Devon could be fully trusted. His father worked for Agness and was her vassal, after all. Maybe he was on her side.
My classmates listened intently to Professor Lochlan as he went through the next potion recipe, completely oblivious to the fates that awaited them. They giggled and chattered like normal schoolgirls would, happy to live in their cliques and ignorance. I’d rather be one of them, dancing around mindlessly in this happy fantasy the goddesses had created for them. Then again, if I were left to stumble along blindly, I’d be powerless to change what awaited us.
Maybe I still was, and that thought terrified me to no end.
I slapped myself over the face to steel my resolve more. I shouldn’t let fear control me. That was how I’d end up a pathetic slob. My self-harm earned me a weird stare from Francesca.
“What’s up with you?” she asked calmly. I blinked at her in surprise. It was only our second meeting, but I expected her to sound snottier. The last incident, with her burning her own hands off, must have caused her to lose some confidence.
“It’s a new way to make your skin tauter,” I said. “You should try it.”
“Let me make this clear,” Bitchface said. “I still hate your guts and think you should burn in the seventh circle of hell, but I care for my hands more, so I’m not going to create unnecessary arguments and think we should at least attempt to cooperate.”
I didn’t like the thought of cooperating with her, but I needed to climb up the ranks, too. Bitchface and I came to a tense truce formed mostly out of convenience.
“I must say,” Bitchface added, “I’m not keen on forming an alliance with a murderer.”
“A murderer?”
“I still think you killed Miley.”
“On what basis?”
“You were sleeping next to her, in her room.”
“Do you want me to clap for you?” I clasped my hands together in a mocking gesture. “You have impeccable detective skills.”
If only she knew the truth about Miley, then she wouldn’t be acting this haughtily. She turned her nose up and turned her attention back to Professor Lochlan, who was holding up a phallic mushroom and flicking it around. He seemed a little too excited doing that.
“Let’s just try to focus on getting good grades,” I said. “That’s what important.”
Jeanine slumped her shoulders and sank into a hunched position.
I, too, returned my gaze to Lochlan, wanting to follow the curriculum closely.
Lochlan ran his fingers around the rim of the mushroom, which sent an awful sense of discomfort through me. Did he really have to do that? “This here is the Abestus, a variety of mushroom created by Dionysus many hundreds of years ago.”
From my vague memory of literature class, I recalled Dionysus being a male god. I raised my hand. “Was he a god?” I asked.
Lochlan shook his head. “He was a vassal, albeit a very powerful one. Many thought his powers rivaled that of a god, and so after Ares’s rebellion, the goddesses needed to control him and have him subdued.” Lochlan held the mushroom up. “It is not common for a vassal to have powers of creation.” He then smacked the mushroom onto the cutting board, chopped it up roughly, and placed it into a beaker. As I casually glanced at my vassals, I saw them wincing. No doubt they likened the mushroom to their dicks.
Come to think of it, I’d never seen any of them before. I wondered if they were just as large.
I reminded myself to focus. I shouldn’t be thinking about dicks when trying to ace a class. They were an effective but unnecessary distraction.
Lochlan continued, “The mushroom is a breois element. It’s highly destructive, and if you chop it up the wrong way, it’ll explode, and you’ll probably lose your hands.”
Great. Why did the stakes always have to consist of losing my hands? Bitchface shifted uncomfortably in her seat and glanced at her palms. They were mostly healed, but the memory of their skin melting off must have given her some trauma. That probably served as incentive to pay better attention.
Lochlan went through a plethora of other ingredients. I focused, trying to remember every one. As I did, images of dead bodies came flashing through my thoughts repeatedly, serving as motivation. I had to get this right. The fear of death was a pretty decent reason for not dicking around.
“The school year has just started,” Lochlan said. “So, even if you did terribly in the last class, that isn’t the end of things. The grading of this lesson will weigh double compared to the last. If you do well in this, then your scores can be doubled and your standings will change. I always want to encourage competition.” The professor placed his hands on his hips and nodded to himself, as if taking pride in his genius way of managing the students. I wasn’t too impressed.
Francesca and I exchanged glances. Our truce pulled like a tight string between us. It was taut, ready to snap at any moment.
I’d memorized every instruction Lochlan gave, which surprised me. I didn’t have particularly good memory. In fact, my memory was utter shit. Maybe it was because I often didn’t try, since I got bored so easily.
Ten minutes later, I’d finished my potion at the same time as Jeanine. I let Jeanine lead the team, since it seemed like potions were her forte. As I looked at Danna across the classroom, I saw that she’d done a good job, too. We’d cut up the dick mushroom like experts and whipped up the poison Lochlan wanted to in no time at all. I sniffed at the resulting grayish potion that we’d poured into a beaker.
“Caramel Valencia,” the professor said. He’d stopped in front of our table with a puffed-out chest and his hands behind his back. He narrowed his eyes at me, and I could already feel him judging me like a criminal, even though I’d done nothing wrong. Worry spiked up my chest. Had I messed up the potion? “And what do we have here?” he asked.
“Um,” I began, “whatever you instructed us to create? The poison’s supposed to be tested on rats later, right?”
The professor, despite his terrible fashion sense, was a good-looking guy. He had full lips that he pressed together. “I’m not talking about the lesson. I’m talking about you. How are you feeling?”
“Feeling?” I asked. “Since when did you guys care about the half-bloods’ feelings? We’re just here to be graded and pass tests, right?”
Lochlan waved his hands, snobbishly gesturing at nothing in particular. “Have you been angrier lately? Violent, perhaps? Do you sense the need to break things, ruin things, hurt others?”
I felt Francesca’s and Jeanine staring. They were obviously wondering why the professor was singling me out. No doubt, Francesca’s suspicions that I’d killed Miley had risen after this interaction. I could almost smell the accusation coming from her.
“I’m sorry, professor,” I said. “The only thing that got broken is my heart, after my shitty ex did whatever he did, and even then, there’s not really that much damage. Everything’s fine.”
The professor cocked his head. “Hm.”
I lifted a brow at him, not liking that he was eying me as if I were some lab rat. “We finished our potion.” I held up the beaker of gray liquid. “And in record time, too.”
“Good.”
I tensed, trying to ignore how Lochlan’s judgmental appraisal unsettled me.
Lochlan reached from the other side of the table and pulled out a cage. Inside the cage was a chittering albino rat with matted white fur. “Test it on this.”
“How?”
“Pour the potion on the rat and we’ll see how it reacts.”
“Must we?” The rat looked up at me with red eyes that belonged to the devil incarnate. It was a hideous creature, although still cuter than the brightlings. Then again, everything was cuter than the brightlings. The rat cleaned its whiskers and looked at me innocently. I’d never been one for torture or violence. I shouldn’t be going around hurting harmless animals. “Can’t you tell whether the potion works just by looking at it? I know that PETA doesn’t exist here, but that doesn’t mean we should be cruel. Love and kindness to all creatures, yeah?” Even those horrid brightlings.
Lochlan chuckled, momentarily breaking his mask of seriousness. Strangely, that creeped me out even more. He pushed the cage closer to me. “Please, Caramel, do follow the instructions closely. Do you want to be at the bottom of the class forever?” There was only one kind of bottom I was interested in. Actually, four. I glanced at my vassals.
“No, of course not.”
“Then it’ll do you good to listen to my orders. Pour the poison on the rat.”
My stomach twisted as Lochlan unlocked the cage and pulled the poor creature out. It squealed, obviously terrified. Lochlan spread the rat out in front of me as if it were a chicken breast.
“Pour it.”
Pleading red eyes stared up at me.
I hesitated.
This was too cruel.
“Please, Caramel,” the professor said. “Or would you like to get more marks deducted? The more you fall behind, the longer you’ll need to catch up, and you don’t want to face the consequences of being behind. I can assure you that it won’t be the least bit pleasant.”
I knew that very well. I raised the beaker of my potion slowly, almost hearing the clock on the wall tick. It really was only a rat. Rats died all the time. They bred like, well… rats, and there was no shortage of them in the world, even here in the Sanctuary.
But I knew the creature could feel, and I was not a violent person.
“Carame—”
Francesca Bitchface got tired of my dallying. She snatched the beaker from me and poured its contents over the creature. The rat shrieked, begging for the torment to stop. Its white fur burned, turning a blackish color. Its shrieks clawed at my eardrums, and I winced while watching its pain. I lasted for a minute before I had to turn away. Watching it die like that was too much for me to handle, and even though I thought like a badass, I got super squeamish at gore. It really wasn’t as bad as seeing the half-blood holocaust, but terrible nevertheless. When the squealing stopped, I allowed myself to peer back. Bitchface had kept her eyes fixed on the rat dying the entire time. She had a heart of ice.
“Hm,” Professor Lochlan said. “No reaction.” At first, I thought he was talking about the rat, but then I noticed his blue eyes studying me intently. “The goddess used to grow passionate when seeing things die.”
Goddess? What was he talking about?
Grief swallowed me, weighing heavily on my heart. Injustice! The rat didn’t have to die like that. It was a poor little creature that deserved to be free and happy in the wild. Instead, it had died pathetically. I grabbed an empty beaker and squeezed. I didn’t have to squeeze very hard to make the beaker crack. A shard punctured my palm and buried itself into my flesh. The physical pain was nothing compared to the tight cinching of my heart. The rat didn’t have to die.
Whoa. I frowned at my reaction. Why did I have so many emotions? It was only a rat.
“Cara?” I recognized Hansel’s voice.
“She’s a bit out of it,” Dana said.
“Hey, calm down.” He’d grabbed my shoulder and shook it. My vision focused when I noticed him snapping his fingers in front of my eyes. “It’s all right. It was an experiment. You’re fine.” He wouldn’t stop throwing words of reassurance at me, and I latched on to his voice, using it to calm down.
I shut my eyes tight and took deep breaths. When I opened them again, normalcy had returned. I let the beaker go. Groaning, I pulled the shard of glass out of my skin. I breathed through clenched teeth to cope with the slicing pain. What had come over me?
Professor Lochlan stared at me. A deep cut had formed between his brows. “This isn’t good at all.”
“Yeah,” I said. “No kidding. I’d be worried about your mental health if you said otherwise.” I pulled the corners of my lips up and attempted sheepish laughter. I was scared of myself. I’d turned crazy for a split second there. There were too many uncontrollable emotions raging throughout me. I recalled episodes of this when I was younger, but I’d stopped experiencing them long ago. I didn’t even get them when I saw Max fucking that Asian chick.
The professor pulled out his clipboard from his sling bag. With a feathery pen, he scrawled onto it. I questioned what he was writing when I saw the magical, glittery scoreboard at the front of the classroom dissipate before returning anew with different figures. My name now sat in the center of the list. I’d climbed from the bottom of the class.
“Fairness is encouraged,” Lochlan said. “I commend you for your speed and efforts. Your team was the quickest at creating a workable and effective potion, as evidenced by what happened with the rat.”
Hansel forced a smile at me. “Good job, Cara.”
I knew he was attempting to be encouraging, but he did little to appease my anxiety.
I glanced down at my palm. “Well, at least we have less to be concerned about with that whole grading thing.” The wound slashed right across my skin and bled a violent red. I was afraid I’d have to confront the side of me I’d always wanted to ignore.
Chapter Three
“Try to look at the bright side of things, Cara,” I said to myself. I was already showing signs of going crazy, so why fight it? What was so bad about going full-on apeshit? Crazy people had an excuse to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and that seemed pretty fun. “There’s a giant heap of bodies you might join soon, but at least the scenery is great. You can have endless amounts of red velvet cake, too. I’m surrounded by guys who are willing to massage my feet whenever I want. Well, at least a couple of them are. What more can a girl ask for?” I peered at the textbook in front of me. “But then there’s… homework.”
I sat next to the desk of my new room. The lights here were different from what we had on Earth. The lamp didn’t need to be fueled by electricity. Instead, it was a glass ball that had pretty little sprites dancing in it. The sprites looked happy doing their thing. They were shaped like women, moving about using their fairy-like wings. Occasionally, they’d stop to wave at me, serving as the distraction I needed from study. I’d spent three whole minutes trying to interact with the sprites. But then they got bored of me and lounged around.
Homework.
I hated homework. Back on Earth, I hardly ever turned it in on time. That was one reason why I’d flunked out. I was too busy trying to create awesome tunes. Why look at math when musical notes were so much prettier? Half-blood homework was just as boring as human homework.
I’d drawn a whole page of treble clefts on the notebook next to me using my new feather pen. I used the back of the feather to tickle my jaw. It felt nice. Maybe I should do that for another five minutes. Anything to keep me from having to look through the monster-load of papers in front of me.
“It’s not even that thick,” Hansel said, chuckling. He picked up the stack of paper in front of me and flipped through it. Had I said my complaint aloud again? “It’s so thin. Ten pages at most.”
“It is the worst,” I said. “I flunked out of one school because of homework, and I don’t doubt that this is going to hold me back too. I was born with a curse. I have a terrible affliction of bad reading skills. It’s why I can’t study.” I palmed the top of my forehead and shook my head. I was starting to get a migraine. I blamed it on the tiny letters on the page.
“You can get through this in half an hour.” Hansel seemed amused at my whining.
“Oh, you overestimate me.”
�
��And yet you can write such beautiful music,” Hansel said, running a thumb over the score I’d written on my notebook. He began humming. He had perfect pitch, which surprised me. I hadn’t realized that Hansel was musically inclined, and finding that out caused him to be infinitely more interesting. “What’s the difference? I assume that the alphabet should be easier to get through. Most people prefer to read English.”
“I’m not like most people.” I was convinced that I’d been dropped on my head when I was a baby. I was slower than most kids, yet fast at the same time. Sometimes I viewed myself as a walking contradiction. But then again, most people were. I groaned. My headache got worse. I was confusing myself with all this philosophical bullshit. I just wanted to sleep and forget about everything—homework, especially. “Can I burn it?” I asked. I had to go through all the properties of potion ingredients, and staring at chaotic mess of foreign terms encouraged my brain to shut down.
Hansel chuckled, flipping through the pages again before setting the stack back on my desk.
“What’s the problem?” Theo asked, appearing at the doorway. “Is there anything you need help with?” He grinned at me, friendly as usual. He was the prototypical friendly giant. Theo had a set of shoulders that looked dependable. I could rest my head on them all day, and he seemed like the type to give those he loved big bear hugs that might accidentally crush them. His charismatic presence was emphasized by his sandy beach waves and sun-kissed skin. He strode closer to me with a confident swagger and peered over my shoulder. “Having trouble with schoolwork?”
“It’s killing me,” I said. “I don’t have much to leave behind, but once my homework is done murdering me, please tell Lydia I love her and that I thank her for everything that she’s given me. Also, help me flip Agness off. If you do it every day for the rest of eternity, that’d be preferable.”
Waking the Goddess Page 2
